themarineiguana

🎉🎉🎉🥳🥳🥳 Awesome news! God bless you! Hitting "Level 1" is an exciting achievement!

I think people who haven't had the experience of actively trying to communicate in a different language (other than their native tongue) don't quite understand how helpful generative AI has been recently for being able to get one's thoughts across clearly... ... or how unhelpful rules that paint its usage with a broad brush 🎨 might be. Those of us born in the US I think are particularly vulnerable to thinking that blindly enforcing this rule (without any exceptions) makes even a modicum of sense, especially since we live in a pretty isolated part of the world where almost everyone we encounter has a proficient command of the English language and native speakers are generally not expected to become fluent in any other languages. If you ask me, a change to the rules to allow for exceptions to generative AI usage in the case of translating one's forum posts (for non-malicious purposes) would probably be helpful... especially for sellers not offering writing/translation services for any of said languages (as in the case of OP).

What I often say is this... "Please see the attachment for delivery. If everything looks okay, please accept delivery on the order screen and we can tie up any loose ends with this order." This subtly reminds a buyer that there is more to the process (because many buyers — especially new buyers — don't realize this). It also subtly hints that they should keep their eyes open 👀 for any subsequent prompts from Fiverr during said process (e.g. when Fiverr prompts a buyer to review a seller).

Listen, I think it's worth giving credit to the first three potentially positive new features (although I can see how the idea of partial refunds might get abused by less-than-stellar buyers, it still has a lot of potential and has been on my wish list)... but the fact is that these three promising policy shifts taste like the brownie that Fiverr is using to mask the taste of year-old 🥦 broccoli... ... that is to say... the stinky inky fourth change... Reviews on Cancelled Orders are a big silly idea that tries to solves a non-problem (seriously, I would argue that reviews left for buyers chronically "oversell" a buyer far more than reviews for sellers, which I think many would agree more often skew a touch too severe). It also potentially opens up new doors for savvy scammers (posing as buyers) to wheedle their way into — shall we say — free gigs with a new toolkit 🧰 of not-so-subtle leverage at their disposal? In the past, the advantage of cancellations was mutual: Buyers didn't have to pay. Sellers could avoid negative feedback. That was transactional, both sides could walk away from a suboptimal situation with their dignity in tact, and it was already a situation where the seller arguably got a bit of the short end of the stick (as the buyer was only out time, whereas the seller was out time, labor, and potentially cancellation rate). At any rate, the first three changes do sound promising, but the fourth sounds like a quixotic dud that risks alienating a lot of sellers.

Oh wow! This actually appears to be quite a positive change 😅 To be honest, I've long thought a 10,000 USD minimum for the TRS rank would be a lot more reasonable, and could theoretically help those sellers experiencing a sudden ☄️ meteoric rise attain (and retain) a more stable foothold quicker. (At least, in theory...) I've been more than a bit confrontational regarding recent policy decisions as of late, but I think I can get behind this one at least.

☝ This one looks the most interesting, and I can see a lot of potential here. But... Major challenges as I see it: How well will the AI "understand" subtle nuances? For example, if someone is looking for video background removal services for a scene where no greenscreen was used, will it accidentally recommend a chroma key service that does require greenscreen? How well will it mitigate Zipf's law in recommending sellers? One of the biggest issues on the platform (and many platforms) is how to recommend equitably. Does the chatbot ask the buyer if they're willing to consider new sellers? Does the chatbot ask what the buyer's review score range is... for those buyers willing to take a chance on sellers with suboptimal scores? Is the chatbot sophisticated enough to be able to recognize the 🥳 enthusiasm gap between written reviews (for buyers who do absolutely want the highest rated sellers)? And in those cases, is the chatbot able to prevent itself from overly recommending sellers who are swamped with work as opposed to those who are currently experiencing dry spells 🌵? I think this feature has enormous potential... ... people who have seen my posts know I've been pretty acerbic in my assessment of some of Fiverr policies, but part of the reason I haven't taken my toys and gone home is that I do see a lot of potential in this platform. This looks like it could be a step in the right direction... but this is probably going to require active and watchful maintenance to make sure it's equitable.

Sometimes sellers do make mistakes, but I've also found that (some) buyers can be hypercritical. The fact that OP did correct on the subsequent delivery sounds like that probably should've warranted a 5 star review ⭐ for his efforts. If you'll look at buyer's profile, he actually gave the last seller a 4.7 on their first order too, but he also seems to have subsequently provided 5 star reviews to that same seller. Unfortunately though, you can see that said seller hasn't received any orders from anyone else. So, this does pose a considerable concern. Did the suboptimal initial review either (a) reduce that seller's presence on the search results -and/or- (b) make it so his profile looked less optimal to prospective buyers? At this point, your best bet might be to try your hand at 📱 social media promotion in an attempt to mitigate either of the above concerns, or perhaps to think of some special deals/offers that might entice people to give your service a try. Although I realize that's suddenly a lot of new work to put on your plate, it might be a good way to dig out of this unfortunate situation.

One of the interesting paradoxes ‍💫 of the highest rated sellers is the fact that when you get big, sometimes you become extremely swamped with work. So, this can lead to some issues... I remember there were times (when I was at my busiest a couple years back) when I had to turn away buyers just because I didn't think I'd be able to do their projects in a timely manner, or I would instead try to give them realistic lead times (considering the number of orders already in the queue) which were unfortunately longer than what they would've otherwise preferred. Though I'm sure some sellers actually are secretly multi-person studios, I suspect the majority of us (myself included) are just individual freelancers. And there are only so many hours in the day. ⏰ But I think this ostensible limitation can sometimes be a good incentive to try and find newer sellers with a only a few orders under their belt, because people at that stage are often a lot more "hungry" to get ahead. You can take a risk on a brand new seller, or — if a project is too important and you want to mitigate the risk — find someone with just a few orders under their belt (who still have some really enthusiastic feedback). The point is this: the highest rated sellers (especially those whose profiles tend to say "last delivery: 3 picoseconds ago") are sometimes just in too high demand.

But what's to stop a cancellation that the seller requests from still counting against said seller's metrics (in the same way the buyer's cancellation request seems to have in sahhart's case)? What we've seen lately is both Fiverr's algorithms and customer service seemingly taking a more unconventionally draconian approach 🐉 to sellers than ever before... not to mention that many sellers are probably soon going to have to weigh — going forward — whether or not even simply requesting cancellation might yield negative feedback....... or if even simply posting the wrong request to customer service might yield an instant (and ostensibly unappealable) account deletion. And even if you can navigate all the rules and exceptions and determine that your request is sufficiently innocuous to risk contact CS... remember the words of someone we both know well: So, even if everything looks perfectly aligned with TOS 📚, that doesn't mean we won't see some inconvenient exceptions made down the road (and probably to the detriment of sellers) if Fiverr keeps up this ill-conceived sellers-are-cannon-fodder policy shift.

No, Fiverr did wrong. I'm afraid your "hot take" 🔥 here is incredibly ridiculous, smartdezigns. Simply requesting a review change should not be grounds for dismissal, nor should the TOS be treated like some sacred text 📜 where any slight deviation is treated like blasphemy. I can understand a warning or temporary suspension if a seller were to keep asking and asking and trying to finagle an alteration out of customer service, but to completely eradicate an account as well-established as nexartdesign — which had dozens and dozens of five-star reviews — simply because the seller asked (and had an arguably legitimate reason for asking, by the way)... That... is... ludicrous. It also penalizes any of this seller's "repeat buyers", who can now no longer place an order from a seller with whom they enjoy working — so this is essentially a one-two punch of terrible customer service on Fiverr's part. So no, whether Fiverr technically has a right to do this or not or whether the strictest letter of the TOS goes one way or another, this was an ill-conceived move on Fiverr's part and an absolutely chilling glimpse into what blind legalism looks like. Make sure you look into withdrawing any outstanding funds, btw.

What you're describing is actually similar to something I think Fiverr was secretly implementing in its algorithm... 👩‍🏫 Theory time! For a while, especially after the pandemic when there was a sudden influx of new sellers, it seemed like Fiverr would shuffle around search results every once in a while to try to even things out. Do I have proof? No, not really XD But my evidence comes from the way orders would come in. There would seem to be — once every month or two (after a dry spell 🌵) — a number of prospective buyers who would contact me in a short period of time. If I was able to handle their requests, it seemed to boost my conversion rate and that would seemingly — in turn — get me even more exposure and brand new buyers. 🥳🎉 If I was correctly interpreting what was going on — and that's a big if — because I'm not R2-D2 and I can't just ask the algorithm 🤖 ... it was actually a pretty clever strategy... ... until the 419 problem got worse. 🤦 Oh my gosh. I would have one prospective seller who would contact me with a legit project, and then an ostensible 419 seller who would basically knock the ball out of my hands (as it were) and cause a downtick in my conversion rate (which is why one of my first posts on this forum was to argue that conversion rate should be geoweighted 🌎 to tackle the 419 issue). But over the past year, the algorithm seems to have abandoned this shuffle-and-see strategy (if it ever was the strategy to begin with), and now I'm half convinced it's relying too much on 📢 Gig Promotion. At any rate, I see that your services are primarily language based. The only time I have thus far purchased something on Fiverr was from an amazing young lady in Indonesia (shabrinaaarifah) who translated an old Japanese short film 🎬 for me. She went above and beyond, and I would expect Japanese translation to be in especially high demand... and yet after three years, I remain her only order to date. 😔 And that's why my suggestion would be to diversify your offerings, especially now that generative AI is getting so sophisticated. My writing services, for example, have had far less interest since ChatGPT came into play, with only my legacy customers holding on thus far. My only new customers this whole year have been for my lightsaber rotoscoping gigs (something that AI probably still has difficulty accomplishing if it's trying to track a poorly lit plastic blade 😅). Perhaps it might require learning some brand new skills, but diversifying your offerings might be key. I did that a few years ago when I learned 3D animation, something I'd long wanted to do, and that did arguably "pay dividends" not only on Fiverr but seems to be continuing to do so elsewhere as well.

📢Promoted Gigs and 💵 Seller Plus are Fiverr's MLM•like services that should probably be ignored unless you're a Top Rated Seller (or swiftly honing in on TRS status). I realize I'm being even more blunt than usual, but 💵 Seller Plus is essentially an arbitrary paywall around analytics services that should probably come standard considering how much Fiverr already skims off a seller's order revenue and tip revenue — not to mention — the fees they already levy on buyers for both orders and tips. But, if you can tolerate this level of ostensible corporate shenaniganry -and- you are eligible to join, you should probably only sign up for this if you already have a steady stream of buyers and a lot of cashflow through your gigs (again... being TRS or a Level-2-rapidly-approaching-TRS). 📢Promoted Gigs are even rougher, because it's less obvious how much bang you're getting for a less obvious minimum monetary investment. Both of these services are potentially self-defeating for Fiverr... because they artificially widen the gap between the haves/have-nots by either (potentially) giving a competitive advantage to those who are already doing well or they (potentially) play on the desperation of people who might've been doing well at one point but aren't doing so well at present (it doesn't take too much of a leap in imagination to realize a platform with less-than-stellar motives could potentially exploit this kind of situation in a not-so-great way... i.e. "tighten the faucet" on certain sellers until they elect to promote their gigs). (Hopefully Fiverr is not like that... but we've seen confidence eroded on at least one other platform that introduced a promote your content feature while growth curves appeared to simultaneously artificially plateau for those who didn't; so whether it was a coincidence or not, sometimes it might be helpful to at least avoid the appearance that it could be manipulated thusly.) Not to mention that 📢Promoted Gigs cheapen reviews by potentially offering priority to sellers who can pay the opt-in-fees over those who might otherwise struggle to do so yet are arguably putting out a better product... Note: I didn't say cheapens the review score, because there is a minimum score requirement on Gig Promotions. I said it cheapens the reviews themselves... because when a seller provides a knockout service for their buyer, said buyer often sings about their seller's exploits from the tops of the hills — figuratively, via reviews of course — and therein lies one of the weaknesses of a hypothetical gig with a simple minimum numeric score saddled with reviews from somewhat less enthusiastic buyers that keeps — nevertheless — bubbling to the top of the search results due to monetary-based promotions.) Whatever success Fiverr's experimentation with 📢Promoted Gigs and 💵 Seller Plus has been (both being relatively recent additions to the site)... I reckon it might arguably equate to a bubble. I have a feeling Fiverr initially benefitted from the revenue uptick off these "pseudo-subscription" streams, but they may face a less upwardly-mobile seller-base in the long-term as more and more frustrated new sellers potentially turn their gaze off-platform. It's all fun and games when your stock of sellers is in relative abundance. Anyway, I digress... like a lot... Promoting gigs is kinda sorta the point of Fiverr in the first place. Why wouldn't somebody just download a payment app and go to a subreddit that promotes freelancers for free if that weren't the case? When you put paywalls around basic functionality, you risk alienating (or at least eroding the resolve of) your seller-base and seeing a resultant downtick in buyer interest, since those who opted into these services can't necessarily handle 100% of the demand for their categories. ⭐⭐⭐ If you ask me, both 📢Promoted Gigs and 💵 Seller Plus should probably be tossed in favor of making the extremely important (yet woefully underdiscussed) "search feature" more intuitive, equitable, and friendly toward upwardly-mobility. ⭐⭐⭐ *gets off soapbox and stores it in a bigger soapbox for safekeeping 📦*

I remember the first time someone ordered without messaging me first. Oh, that was a situation that crawled up and down my spine 😅 In most of the situations where this has happened, I simply requested cancellation... but I'm not sure that's as viable an option now (although this instance would seem to be one of those exceptions they listed in that terrible new buyer-can-leave-a-review-on-cancelled-orders rule). Anyway, it didn't take long to realize I needed to absolutely plaster "Pls msg first 🙂" over all my gig packages and in my description. So for future reference, I've found that when you write "Pls msg first 🙂 " just about EVERYWHERE on your gig (in the package titles, etc), people seem to notice 🔎 it better.

When I first started on Fiverr, I think manual "background removal" 🖼️ was actually one of my very first gigs. It was an extremely competitive field back in 2019, and I never got a single legit customer (only scammers). 😅 I quickly abandoned that gig back then and concentrated more on my animation gigs. But now, new technologies are making it even more difficult to carve out a niche in background removal, unless perhaps you can offer a spin on your services that AI apparently can't do very well: Like, you could advertise the isolation of multiple, complicated foreground subjects -or- the isolation of foreground subjects that look very similar to the background. Bottom line, it might help to advertise yourself as the "background removal solution" for when AI fails 🤖

Did that message appear as a notification? That's pretty cool if that's the case! 😁 God bless you! Congrats on your accomplishment! (From your profile, it looks like you're doing WAAAAAAAY better than I was when my account was only that old 😅)

Listen, smashradio, you're actually pretty cool, and I can see why they chose you as a liaison... but that doesn't change the fact that they seem to have told you a lot of motivations which we've already guessed... It also still doesn't change the fact that we, as sellers, are also one of Fiverr's customers, and we're facing new policies that seem to tip the balance super off-kilter in favor of one class of their customers as opposed to another. This is especially potentially deleterious in the case of scammers posing as buyers, who now have far too much leverage to cause harm.

So, this is something I've been thinking about occasionally for a couple years now... In situations where I’ve found that I might want to purchase services (e.g. voice acting) for personal projects, I’ve found myself hesitating to contact other sellers. The main reason for this is the Conversion Rate Metric 📈, which determines how many people who contact you actually buy said gig. For example, a couple years ago, I wanted to get a really authentic-sounding Ducky impression (from Land Before Time 🦕). I began auditioning different sellers to see if any could help me (I asked them to send in some anodyne phrase like “Fiverr is a site that was founded in 2010, yup yup yup!”), and I narrowed it down to a lady from the UAE and another from the Philippines who got pretty close, but I ultimately decided to go a different route for the project. Afterwards though, I started thinking about the fact that me contacting them and not buying probably affected their Conversion Rate, and I suddenly got spooked about the idea of potentially trying to audition people in the future (concerned that I would cause more harm than good for a majority of the auditionees). So, my question is… does anyone else find themselves grappling with this kind of guilt, and do you think this is this proving to have a chilling effect on trying to do otherwise normal things like hold "auditions"? Do you think Fiverr should consider weakening the influence of Conversion Rate on our metrics? (After all, not getting a gig and then having it count against your metrics is kind of a one-two punch). Or, just weaken it in situations where sellers contact other sellers? Curious to know if I’m alone.

And now to reveal my Dad's wisdom for how he notifies himself of text messages: "Hey [INSERT NAME HERE]! You have a message!" 😅😅😅 I would probably recommend something like that for a notification, because hearing your own name really gets your attention. As for software, there are probably quite a few apps out there for recording MP3s right on your phone. However, Dad did all his voice recording on the computer... he used Audacity 🔊 (with the "LAME MP3 Encoder") and then used Sweech to transfer the MP3 to his phone. Easier to control the quality of the final recording this way, but I suppose an app could be easier if you prefer. • Note that he did this only for text messages though (he doesn't use Fiverr). For apps like Fiverr, I think you need to: Long press the app. Press "App Info". Go to "Notifications". Specifically choose "Inbox messages". Click "Sound". Then change the sound to the recording of your choice. (it should appear if you moved it to the "Notifications" folder). Note: This may be different on other versions of Android. 📱

Like catwriter said, it's different for different sellers. 🙂 When I got my first legitimate order, I think I had all seven gig slots filled with at least one service or another. But the one that got me my first order was an "anime-style" animation service. The buyer's specific request — in turn — led me to discover the demand for bringing custom "anime renders" to life. So that prompted me to create a brand new gig to respond to that even more specific niche, which proved to be quite successful.

In my experience, it's less a question of the quantity of your offerings, and more a question of the diversity of your offerings. If you have a lot of diverse gigs (like writing, music, art, voice acting, translation work, programming, etc.), you have a better chance of gaining interest because you're casting a wider net. As a plus, the more diverse your offerings, the more likely you'll be to see custom requests come in that could give you an idea of brand new gigs you can create to respond to previously unforeseen demands. For example, back when COVID started, Lo-Fi music took off like crazy. So, people were looking for chill Lo-Fi animations. 😎 And as a result, I created a new gig to respond to that sudden demand.

Hi! As someone who has suffered in the past from a relatively long-term illness that rendered both physical and mental exertion varyingly difficult — thank the Lord it has since passed — I can fully understand your concerns. Especially from the spoon theory perspective. 🥄 I remember one day when I couldn't even bring myself to do anything besides completely "check out" in front of a del Toro film, and other days when I would sleep an alarmingly high number of hours. I can see how there might be improvements that could be made to the site for people who suffer from chronic illnesses or disabilities. A number of metrics are built around the capacity of able individuals for very tight responsiveness, which could be loosened for folks who otherwise struggle in that regard. Also depending on the severity of the condition, improved accessibility as a whole might be a worthwhile consideration. Were there any specific recommendations you had in mind?

It might be helpful to send a new message to customer support outlining these concerns. I've found different members of customer support respond differently. Some have been very engaged and understanding, and some have been... well... not so engaged and not so understanding 😅 Probably the best way to handle it would be to summarize the situation -and- to request that you'd like the recent cancellation to not count for the reasons you've stated. Just be super polite about it, but probably be willing to take "no" for an answer. Cancellation and on-time rate do seem to recover over time (something to keep in mind just in case customer service doesn't agree to make the adjustment). So....... no guarantees, but from personal experience, there have been times when customer service has reversed an unfair cancellation demerit for me (e.g. that time when a customer accidentally placed a duplicate order).

Intro: Have you ever had someone give you an unexpected discount at a garage sale or something? Pretty awesome, isn't it? That shot of dopamine is quite a thrill. Unadvertised Introductory Discounts are a great way to capture that magic in a bottle and build customer satisfaction, and — as an added "plus" — to protect yourself as a seller! So, um... what was that about protecting myself? I'm guessing the "building customer satisfaction" part was pretty self-explanatory, so let me explain the "protecting yourself" part. (First, as usual, you should probably make sure "Please message me first!" is plastered all over your gig packages and gig description.) Let's say you have a prospective buyer who comes to you and says: "I understand you do logo design and offer virtually unlimited revisions for 25 USD in 3 days. Can you make me a logo according to these specifications, which would render it so bizarrely complicated that it would make an illustration out of a Where's Waldo? book look as empty as Lost Springs, Wyoming by comparison?" To which you could respond: "Sure, and I'll even do it for 20 USD instead of the usual 25. But the only catch is — due to the complexity of this project — I'm going to need set a limit of only two revisions and the lead time is going to need to be 5 days instead of three." You might be confused why we decrease the price here, but the secret sauce comes down to the fact that: ⭐⭐⭐ When you provide an unadvertised introductory discount, the customer is a lot less likely to jump the gun and immediately "check out" before you get the chance to issue a custom offer.⭐⭐⭐ People are often willing to prioritize price over other metrics, which means: They'll probably be more "open" to giving you a chance to issue a custom offer. Or if they don't know what a custom offer is, they'll probably subtly ask how to redeem their discount before they proceed. And nudging the customer into a custom offer has the unique benefit of allowing you to override: The number of revisions. The lead time. 📅 Any other specifics that your one-size-fits-all "gig description" normally stipulates. ... so you can essentially provide a bespoke service, finely tailored to the specific nuances of the transaction at hand... without the worry of having a transaction somewhat outside of the normal parameters of your one-size-fits-all packages (where any further adjustments or cancellation are not necessarily guaranteed by Fiverr customer service after the fact). That's it? Pretty much. What we're essentially doing is incentivizing custom offers. Custom offers should probably be the way all orders are handled by default, as the standard checkout process is too much of a one-size-fits-all approach. Plus, as mentioned earlier, this can be a great way to build buyer confidence and ensure that (a) the number of revisions and (b) the lead time better reflect a project's specific "needs". With buyers who are new to Fiverr, it can also be a helpful way to introduce the concept of "custom offers" by giving them a chance to put on the brakes and ask how they can redeem their discount. So... In Conclusion... Um... I don't have anything else to say at the moment. Uh....... you can go home now. (Or if you're already home, please briefly exit the front door, and then immediately reenter your home. 🏠)

As long as the gigs are not identical, you should theoretically be able to create multiple gigs under the same category (like "Writing & Translation"). So, for example, you should be able to have one gig for "Scriptwriting" and another for creating "Product Descriptions" under the "Writing & Translation" category. However, if you were to post two gigs for "Scriptwriting" and didn't do anything to differentiate between your offerings, that might run afoul of current policy. Having multiple accounts for the same individual is generally frowned upon. However, if there is someone else living in your household who wants to open an account, they should theoretically be able to open one. However, I've read that they're apparently not allowed to post gigs in the same category as you... 😅😅😅 It has the potential to get a bit convoluted with all the "rules" and exceptions and what not, but the main takeaway is this....... Probably just make sure your gigs don't offer identical services 🙂

One of the best rules of thumb is this: Real buyers generally want to buy something from you. Fake buyers generally want to sell some weird idea to you. A real buyer might send a message like, "Hey, I see you do Data Entry. I know your gig profile didn't say it specifically, but do you have any familiarity with PostgreSQL? 📋" A fake buyer might be like, "Hi. I am John Smith from Springfield, Illinois. I will send you 27 orders monthly with a top salary, including maternity leave, paternity leave, fraternity leave, you name it. But we can't talk about it here, for reasons I won't elaborate on. Let's talk on $ky¶e when you get a chance." Bottom line... ⭐⭐⭐ The fake buyer is almost never interested in any of your actual advertised gigs. ⭐⭐⭐ When I first started FIverr, I got in the habit of saying things like: "Fiverr's expectation is that we don't communicate offsite, but if you're interested in any of my reasonably priced gigs, please tell me." To which they would often respond with a curt "No thanks." However! There are fake customers who do actually show interest in your gigs as advertised. A small subset of fake buyers will show interest, try to get work from you, and then do everything they can to leave you high and dry. Mostly though, this overlaps the issue known as: "419", which Fiverr still refuses to acknowledge is a problem, nor does it try to permit its users to warn other users about (on the forum at least). To put it bluntly, there are one or two nations where "scam culture" has become so normalized that you will almost inevitably find no one from those codes willing to engage in any real business. You'll probably have to research this on your own so you can be prepared ahead of time to assess the risks. 😅